Friday, August 11, 2017

Creative Nonfiction: What About Memoir?

We are a
people fixated on reality TV shows. We are fascinated with sharing each other’s
opinions in 140-character bytes, and are infatuated with posting the daily
details of our lives on Facebook, along with the other two billion people doing
the same.

So, given
the popularity of peering into each other’s lives, why is it so hard to sell a
memoir?

Poorly written,
me-centered, navel-gazing confessionals have done a disservice to an otherwise
powerful way to touch lives through narrative. I recommend you check out
industry pro Jane Friedman’s tough love advice for first time writers. And Cindy
Sproles' post, The Good, The Bad, & the Memoir, where she addresses some of the reasons
memoirs are such a hard sell. In particular, the dreaded lack-of-platform
problem, and the heavy focus on self over substance.

In fact, recently
at a writers conference, I watched the very scenario Cindy mentions unfold at
the lunch table. A zealous conferee, hoping to prove the specialness of her
story to the acquisitions editor, launched into her tale, scene-by-scene, year-by-year.
After ten minutes, the editor looked as though she’d just been pitched a book on
making mittens out of mouse skins.

All this could
be disheartening for those of us who not only enjoy “true stories well-told,”
but also hope to publish our own. After all, the book of Nehemiah is a memoir—a
first person account of his experience building a wall—and individual
narratives make up a significant portion of the Bible.

Couldn’t the
Lord use our life stories to teach or encourage someone today, even if we’re
not famous or infamous?

At the risk
of having acquisitions editors throw cyber tomatoes at me, I want to encourage
you to pursue that passion in your heart.

So here’s the good news:

There’s more than one entrance to the publishing
stage. You might want to try the back door.

You could:

Think small. Refashion a stand-alone chapter and pitch it to a magazine.

Blog your niche. Especially if your topic has a specific
audience —how a horse changed your life, or growing up in an RV. (Well, maybe
not.) Julie Powell’s blog about making every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook
over the course of a year, led to a book and movie deal. And Molly Wizenberg’s blog led to a column in
Bon Appetit.

Submit to an anthology. Many writers have proudly started out with a
submission in the Chicken Soup for the
Soul series.

Pitch a column. Your local newspaper may welcome your quirky
take on life around town.

And my favorite. Enter contests.

Several
years ago I entered my memoir in the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers
Conference contest. (Whew!)Winning that gave me the confidence to enter another
contest, which garnered the attention of a publisher.

I remember
the irony of the day. The deliveryman had left a while before, and I was back
at my desk. An email caught my attention. It was from a New York agent I had
queried a year earlier. She must have been working her way through her slush
pile, but I was amazed she had even bothered to respond after all this time.
She said although she thought my story was fascinating, she couldn’t sell a memoir
of someone who, in effect, was a nobody. She wished me the best.

I smiled, broad
and wide and looked at the boxes sitting alongside my desk. Author copies from
my publisher—Thomas Nelson.

There are
many reasons a memoir doesn’t make it to the publish line, but if that story in
your heart keeps sticking as close as a noonday shadow, don’t let it go simply
because you’ve been told you’re a nobody.

Because with
God, even a Nobody is a Somebody—and sometimes they get published.

Marcia Moston—author of the award-winning Call of a Coward-The God of Moses and the Middle-class Housewife—has written columns and features for several magazines and newspapers. She has served on the faculty of the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference and currently teaches her true love—memoir and creative nonfiction—at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on the Furman campus in South Carolina.

Thanks for the encouragement and suggestions, Marcia. I particularly like the idea of submitting one chapter to a magazine. I could try that. More people may read a short snippet than an entire book anyway.

Marcia,I'm second-guessing my work, but know my story is relevant, compelling, timely and authentic. I realize I need to have my ms heavily edited for navel gazing as I can't see my mistakes as easily, but I'm praying and asking God's will be done because my story DOES have substance and may be able to make a difference. Just that conviction and love for the burden He's called me to write is enough for me to try. Thanks for your inspiration.

I teach people to write memoirs at LSU in Shreveport and the first question I ask my students is whether they intend to commercially publish. If that's their dream, I do my best to get them into a fiction writing course, because I find that the framework of fiction is often the best way to create a commercially-viable memoir, even though the stories are (or should be!) true in a memoir. This is a great post! If I may, I'll mention your 'back doors' in my next class and recommend your books. Thank you!Sally Hamerwww.sallyhamer.blogpost.com@sarahsallyhamer